2.09.2012

Organization: Magazines

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time throwing out magazines with hosehold tips and recipes. Martha Stewart taking the lead.

I don't even subscribe to magazines, these are just issues I've been given, found in "free" boxes, or end up on my shelf in some other magical way. But they really do take up so much room! Not to mention it'll take me ages to find one recipe that I think I saw a month ago.

Solution: Cut out the pages I want and put them in a binder.

Using an X-acto knife I cut out recipes and household tips and decor ideas. Some recipes are cut and taped on a page because I wanted just one recipe and not the whole page it came on.

Then they go in lightweight plastic sleeves (I ended up using over 200).

It's all still a work in progress, but has been great so far. You can do this with any magazine: fashion, craft, hobby, etc. and organize it further with tabs.

For the binder spine (is it called a spine like a book?) I cut a piece from a scrap of vintage wallpaper and stenciled basic labels.
Much less space taken up, much easier to find things I want, and looks cute to boot!

Just be sure to be careful when using an X-acto knife, they can be very sharp and slippery!

Fabulous! I have been working on a similar thing the past few months. I am very disorganized, but to be a better mommy and wife and happier in general I need to get my life in order! Here's to getting organized!

I actually collect Martha Stewart mags. I have at least one copy of every magazine (US versions) she's ever produced. Weddings, kids, baby, blueprint, body + Soul (now whole living) and all of the special issues. I can part with anything but these (well, these and my Victorias) I used to have a terrible time parting with them, but now I scan or remove anything I like and find inspirational and then just organize it on my external HD. Doing so is free and takes up none of my precious space!

I organise mine in a similar fashion and it works well. Someone above said it must take ages ...it does to start off with but if you keep on top of it it's fine and it is a great resourse to have organised and on tap.

I'm with you, I had a nice office with built in shelves at my old house. Therefore I had the space to have the past 2 years of Martha Stewart Mags there. Our new home doesn't have the space so I did the same thing as you, they went in a binder and the rest were recycled. We did the same thing with our DVD's and CD's too. Saves so much space.

Hello dear =)I love following your blog ... you are beautiful and dress up so well, just love it!We have many points in common, especially in the desire for all things vintage.There is very little time I created my blog, so it is still in the beginning!Keep doing a good job and excuse my bad English.

That is exactly what I have done with my recipes. I'm glad you shared the idea! To jazz up the binders, I covered them with repro vintage housewife fabric (similar to this http://www.jandofabrics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=pin00008 )This is a tutorial for how to do it. http://2littlehooligans.blogspot.com/2010/06/fabric-covered-3-ring-binder-tutorial.html Now, I need to take the time to purge my binders since I used to clip out everything I saw!I like your reader's idea of scanning things too.

Great idea! I've done similar thing with my fashion clippings and articles. I have bought several (now four in total) sketch books and instead of using plastic pockets I have glued everything on the pages. It takes more time because I also want to sort everything by theme/colour/pattern etc. But it's definetly worth it because they are pretty to browse. I can get rid of the magazines that takes enourmous space and these four sketch books only take bout 10 cm on my bookshelf.

My "ideas" collection was manageable enough that I either took a photo of the page and uploaded to Pinterest or found the same thing on the site. I sincerely hope that Pinterest isn't a fad - but either way, binders have more longevity.